Last Word Challenge - The Ultimate Science QuizNew Scientist have run a column called the Last Word for past fifteen years, featuring questions like Do upside down bats get dizzy?, What's the capacity of the human brain in gigabytes? and Why can't elephants jump?. We worked with the editors at New Scientist to take 120 of the best questions and turn them into a quiz called The Last Word Challenge - and you can adapt them into your own quizzes as well!

This project was done by my company, Six to Start, and it's been a lot of fun picking the best questions from all of the columns. I used to be a neuroscientist, so I consider myself reasonably scientifically literate, but a lot of the common-sense answers you might expect (e.g. why is it easier to stay upright on a moving bicycle than a stationary one? Hint - it's not gyroscopic effects!) turn out to be wrong.

We're pretty sure it's one of the few quizzes online where all the answers have been exhaustively fact-checked, and it's guaranteed to provide even the most well-read scientists with some surprising moments.

A fun quiiz. And while I approached it with a teensy bit of trepidation, very nice to discover that I haven't totally lost my grasp of science.posted by philipy at 5:30 PM on September 24, 2010

I liked it - we get New Scientist at work and I only read the last two pages.

One complaint I have is that, on my phone, when I try to scroll and I touch the answer without lifting my finger it thinks I selected that answer. I have tourettes so this is something I do with mouseclicks too (urge to click but I don't lift finger so nothing should happen).

i don't know anything! but this was a lot of fun.posted by sawdustbear at 11:11 AM on September 27, 2010

A bit more feedback... it always seemingly asks the same questions in the same sequence. That's not much fun if you visit it, do a few, and come back later to do more.

If there are 120 questions, I'm certainly not going to do them all in one go. So either picking questions randomly or starting again where you left off would make this more enjoyable for me.posted by philipy at 5:58 PM on September 27, 2010

Could you provide citations to the research with the answer?posted by Blasdelb at 9:51 PM on October 2, 2010